Craft Brewers Alliance 2011 Shareholders Meeting

About a year ago I noted a crazy run-up in the stock price of Craft Brewers Alliance, the parent company of Widmer Brothers, headquartered at Widmer's North Portland facility.  At the time, I was amazed that the stock price (ticker: HOOK) was climbing toward $4.  Fast-forward a year, and in recent weeks it's been hovering around $9.  Somewhere in between, I made a small investment in 115 shares of HOOK, ignoring my own advice about the risks involved.

And so it was that yesterday I wandered over to Russell Street to attend the 2011 CBA Shareholders Meeting.  It was a pretty civilized affair:  Widmer Pitch Black IPA (formerly W'10) and Kona Longboard Lager were on tap, and chilled bottles of Red Hook Pilsner and Copper Hook were available.  Shareholders were given a Widmer grocery sack and invited to pick up a nice "dividend" for attending the meeting:  six-packs of the three CBA brands.  Kurt Widmer ran the meeting with a glass of Pitch Black in hand, and Prosted us with it after the brief formal business portion of the meeting.

There followed a Power Point presentation on the current marketing focus of the company.  Widmer, Kona, and Red Hook -- the three brands that remain in CBA after the sale of Goose Island to InBev -- each fulfill a different goal for the company.  Kona has great summer seasonal sales as beachgoers try to recapture that island feeling from past Hawaiian vacations (marketing speak: Liquid Aloha).  The Widmer brand aims to provide the variety that the modern beer geek demands:  this was the point of this year's rebranding, replacing Broken Halo with the Rotator IPA series, the yearly "W" releases with the more flexible Series 924 four-packs, and continuing the occasional Brothers Reserve bombers.  Red Hook is the part of the portfolio I feel a little sorry for.  This is its 30-year anniversary, and while it was a big fish in a small pond decades ago, the company has all but relegated it to downmarket status.  In Marketingese, Red Hook is sold on its "unique big personality":  the company describes it as "edgy" and "approachable", not as delicious and high-quality.

One interesting thing I learned at the meeting is that CBA really is paying attention to the blogosphere.  The Power Point slides had no fewer than three quotes from Brady's analysis of the Widmer makeover, and one quote from Sanjay's review of Red Hook Pilsner.  No quotes from It's Pub Night, but I was surprised that the Director of Investor Relations -- whom I hadn't met before yesterday -- called me by name on the street before the meeting as I wandered toward the wrong entrance.  Guess I'm not as incognito as I thought I was.

In terms of the stock, this has been a good year.  The price has nearly tripled in the last twelve months.  The sale of CBA's stake in Goose Island brought in a nice cash windfall for the company.  And the business page editors at the Oregonian have been roused from their four-year slumber and finally added HOOK to their table of Stocks of Local Interest.

Last June I listed several risks you might consider if you were thinking about buying stock in the CBA (if you are thinking of such an investment, do read that article).  I received a first-hand lesson in those risks when I took the plunge.  Here's how it happened.  Last August, with the share price threatening $5, I decided to take a gamble in an IRA account and buy 100 shares.  Because so few shares are traded, and because I placed my order late on a Friday, the brokerage only filled part of my order that day.  I was the proud owner of a mere 15 shares, meaning the $9 commission had effectively added 60¢ to the $4.93 share price.  Dammit!  That's like losing 12% on your investment immediately.  The following Monday I was able to get a full 100 shares for $4.95 apiece, though there were some tense moments as I watched the purchase get pieced together in chunks of 4 shares, 6 more, 7 more, wondering if I had just bought another expensive 17 shares, until the final 83 came through.  Moral for the small investor: bid at or above the ask price, and buy early in the day.

A Third Double IPA Blind Tasting

For the last couple months I've been playing around with blind-tasting sets of three Double IPAs, a.k.a. Imperial IPAs.  Hopworks Ace of Spades won the tasting in March, but was defeated by Firestone Walker Double Jack in April. 

This month, when my neighbor Dave and I drove down to San Francisco to visit our pal Andy, Dave took the initiative and brought four bombers of 2IPAs to blind taste, as though we didn't have enough beer-drinking plans.  I had no idea which four IPAs he had brought, so for a change I was not only blindly picking a favorite, but also trying to figure out what beers they were at all.

The crude and only partially effective technique of electrical taping numbered sheets of paper around the bottles allowed Dave to taste blindly as well, though of course he knew which four bottles he had brought.  The competition fell out like this:

• 1st place: Port Brewing Mongo IPA: lots of head, piney nose, gritty bitterness, hot alcohol
• 2nd place: Hopworks Ace of Spades: another hot one, delicious and malty
• 3rd place: Ninkasi Tricerahops: a little thin next to the bruisers, nice orange-blossom hops
• 4th place: Caldera Hopportunity Knocks: honey and diacetyl in the nose, super malty with a long bitter finish

Andy is not as big of a hophead as Dave and me, so his favorites were actually in the reverse order [insert prissy Californian joke here], except that he did like Mongo better than Ace of Spades.

If you've been following these tedious tastings of mine, you'll remember that in the first one we had a lame bottle of Tricerahops; I'm happy to report that the 2007-era favorite has redeemed itself.  Even though it came in third to a couple of heavyweights, it was a tasty beer.  The Port Mongo -- a gift from our buddy Todd, who has a Southern California connection -- was brilliant.  By the Bottle in Vancouver usually stocks Port bottles, so if you see the Mongo up there, pick some up.  The Caldera was a crying shame.  It wasn't too bad at first, but as it warmed up the diacetyl became overwhelming, and it was pretty hard to swallow.  On Beer Advocate most people seem to like it, though I found one fairly recent review that also uses the D-word, so I'm not completely insane.

As for the guessing game -- which number is which beer -- I was pretty pleased with myself since I didn't know which beers were in play to begin with.  But I correctly identified Ace of Spades (easy) and Tricerahops.  Clutching at straws, I guessed the Mongo might have been Lagunitas Hop Stoopid, and really without a clue for the Hopportunity, I hedged my bets and wondered if it was a Ninkasi Total Domination.  Dave didn't do as well, he got Ace of Spades right, but since he wasn't familiar with Mongo he thought maybe the last-place finisher was that one, and guessed that Tricerahops was Caldera and Mongo was Tricerahops.

Conclusion:  Tricerahops -- redeemed (but don't be afraid to return a bad bottle if you get one).  Ace of Spades -- smashing.  Port Brewing Mongo -- seek it out.  Caldera Hopportunity Knocks -- avoid.

Russian River and Bear Republic Pubs

Last week I wrote up a visit to the Lagunitas Taproom, the first stop on a day trip out of the city on a recent trip to San Francisco.  With Andy at the wheel and Dave and I drinking at pubs and snoring in the car, we headed north from Lagunitas to Russian River's pub in Santa Rosa, and then Bear Republic's pub in Healdsburg.

Russian River was fun:  it wasn't wine-country fancy as I had feared, rather it was a spacious, kid-friendly place that would fit right in if it were suddenly dropped into Portland.  The food was pretty standard pub grub, and not surprisingly there was a fabulous selection of RR beers -- 15 on tap the day we were there.  The beers were very reasonably priced -- especially for California -- West Coast ales were $4.50 a pint, and the Belgian "-tion" beers ranged from $3.75 to $6.75 a snifter.  Whether you're going for the hop monsters like Pliny the Elder or Blind Pig, or for the sours like Consecration and Sanctification, you'll be pleased.  Go visit if you're anywhere nearby.

About a half hour north of Santa Rosa is the little resort town of Healdsburg.  Tucked behind the tourist-shopping main drag is a Bear Republic pub, which we thought we'd try, since we like quite a few of their beers, like Red Rocket and Racers 5 and X.  As near as we could tell, no actual brewing happens at the pub, but they plunked a bunch of big tanks down here and there to give it a brewy feel.  The place was a little bit of a letdown, partly because the Bear Republic meet-the-brewer at Apex in Portland a couple weeks ago had a much more amazing selection of their beers than the pub did, and partly because Russian River and Lagunitas were much more our style.  The thing that made the biggest impression on me was that a lot of people at the Healdsburg pub were drinking from German-style 1-liter mugs.  If for some reason you are being punished with an overnight stay in Healdsburg, those would be just the ticket for drowning your sorrows.  But I wouldn't recommend going out of your way for a visit.  Neither the town nor the Bear Republic pub offers much to get excited about.